No More Learning

Viewed mechanically, the energy of collective
Becoming remains constant; regarded from the
economical standpoint, it ascends to its zenith and
then recedes therefrom in order to remain eternally
rotatory. This “ Will to Power” expresses itself
in the interpretation, in the manner in which the
strength is used. The conversion of energy into life;
“life in its highest power” thenceforward appears
as the goal. The same amount of energy,at different
stages of development, means different things.
That which determines growth in Life is the
economy which becomes ever more sparing and
methodical, which achieves ever more and more
with a steadily decreasing amount of energy. . . .
The ideal is the principle of the least possible
expense.
The only thing that is proved is that the world
is not striving towards a state of stability. Con-
sequently its zenith nust not be conceived as a
state of absolute equilibrium.
The dire necessity of the same things happening
in the course of the world, as in all other things,
is not an eternal determinism reigning over all
phenomena, but merely the expression of the fact


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
123
that the impossible is not possible; that a given
force cannot be different from that given force;
that given quantity of resisting force does not
manifest itself otherwise than in conformity with
its degree of strength;—to speak of events as
being necessary is tautological.
2. THE WILL TO POWER AS LIFE.
1
(a) The Organic Process.
640.
Man imagines that he was present at the
generation of the organic world: what was there
to be observed, with the eyes and the touch, in
regard to these processes ? How much of it can
be put into round numbers? What rules are
noticeable in the movements ? Thus, man would
fain arrange all phenomena as if they were for the
eye and for the touch, as if they were forms of
motion : he will discover formula wherewith to
simplify the unwieldy mass of these experiences.
The reduction of all phenomena to the level of
men with senses and with mathematics.
It is a
matter of making an inventory of human experiences:
granting that man, or rather the human eye and
the ability to form concepts, have been the eternal
witnesses of all things.
641.
A plurality of forces bound by a common
nutritive process we call “ Life. ” To this nutritive


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124
THE WILL TO POWER.
process all so-called feeling, thinking, and imagining
belong as means—that is to say, (1) in the form
of opposing other forces; (2) in the form of an
adjustment of other forces according to mould and
rhythm; (3) in the form of a valuation relative to
assimilation and excretion.
642.
The bond between the inorganic and the
organic world must lie in the repelling power
exercised by every atom of energy. “Life”
might be defined as a lasting form of force-estab-
lishing processes, in which the various contending
forces, on their part, grow unequally. To what
extent does counter-strife exist even in obedience ?
Individual power is by no means surrendered
through it. In the same way, there exists in the
act of commanding, an acknowledgment of the
fact that the absolute power of the adversary
has not been overcome, absorbed, or dissipated.
“ Obedience," and "command," are forms of the
game of war.
643.
The Will to Power interprets (an organ in
the process of formation has to be interpreted):
it defines, it determines gradations, differences of
Mere differences of power could not be
aware of each other as such: something must be
there which will grow, and which interprets all
other things that would do the same, according to
the value of the latter. In sooth, all interpreta-
power.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
125
tion is but a means in itself to become master of
something (Continual interpretation is the first
principle of the organic process. )
644.
66
Greater complexity, sharp differentiation, the
contiguity of the developed organs and functions,
with the disappearance of intermediate members-
if that is perfection, then there is a Will to Power
apparent in the organic process by means of whose
dominating, shaping, and commanding forces it is
continually increasing the sphere of its power, and
persistently simplifying things within that sphere:
it grows imperatively,
Spirit” is only a means and an instrument in
the service of higher life, in the service of the
elevation of life.
645.
"Heredity," as something quite incomprehens-
ible, cannot be used as an explanation, but only
as a designation for the identification of a problem.
And the same holds good of "adaptability. ” As
a matter of fact, the account of morphology, even
supposing it were perfect, explains nothing; it
merely describes an enormous fact.
How a given
organ gets to be used for any particular purpose
is not explained. There is just as little explained
in regard to these things by the assumption of
causæ finales as by the assumption of causæ effici-
entes. The concept causa” is only a means of
expression, no more; a means of designating a
thing.


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126
THE WILL TO POWER
646.
There are analogies; for instance, our memory
may suggest another kind of memory which makes
itself felt in heredity, development, and forms.
Our inventive and experimentative powers suggest
another kind of inventiveness in the application of
instruments to new ends, etc.
That which we call our "consciousness," is quite
guiltless of any of the essential processes of our
preservation and growth; and no human brain
could be so subtle as to construct anything more
than a machine to which every organic process
is infinitely superior.
647
Against Darwinism. —The use of an organ does
not explain its origin, on the contrary! During
the greater part of the time occupied in the forma-
tion of a certain quality, this quality does not help
to preserve the individual; it is of no use to him,
and particularly not in his struggle with external
circumstances and foes.
What is ultimately " useful”? It is necessary
to ask, " Useful for what? "
For instance, that which promotes the lasting
powers of the individual might be unfavourable to
his strength or his beauty; that which preserves
him might at the same time fix him and keep him
stable throughout development. On the other
hand, a deficiency, a state of degeneration, may be
of the greatest possible use, inasmuch as it acts
as a stimulus to other organs.
In the same way,


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
127
a state of need may be a condition of existence, in-
asmuch as it reduces an individual to that modicum
of means which, though it keeps him together, does
not allow him to squander his strength. The in-
dividual himself is the struggle of parts (for
nourishment, space, etc. ): his development involves
the triumph, the predominance, of isolated parts;
the wasting away, or the "development into
organs," of other parts.
The influence of “environment” is nonsensically
overrated in Darwin : the essential factor in the
process of life is precisely the tremendous inner
power to shape and to create forms, which
merely uses, exploits “environment. "
The new forms built up by this inner power
are not produced with a view to any end; but, in
the struggle between the parts, a new form does
not exist long without becoming related to some
kind of semi-utility, and, according to its use,
develops itself ever more and more perfectly.
648.
"Utility” in respect of the acceleration of the
speed of evolution, is a different kind of "utility"
from that which is understood to mean the greatest
possible stability and staying power of the evolved
creature.
649.
“ Useful” in the sense of Darwinian biology
means: that which favours a thing in its struggle
with others. But in my opinion the feeling of


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128
THE WILL TO POWER.
being surcharged, the feeling accompanying an
increase in strength, quite apart from the utility of
the struggle, is the actual progress: from these
feelings the will to war is first derived.
650.
Physiologists should bethink themselves before
putting down the instinct of self-preservation as
the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living
thing seeks above all to discharge its strength:
“self-preservation” is only one of the results
thereof. Let us beware of superfluous teleological
principles ! -one of which is the whole concept of
"self-preservation. " *
651.
The most fundamental and most primeval activ-
ity of a protoplasm cannot be ascribed to a will
to self-preservation, for it absorbs an amount of
material which is absurdly out of proportion with
the needs of its preservation : and what is more,
it does not "preserve itself” in the process, but
actually falls to pieces. The instinct which
rules here, must account for this total absence
in the organism of a desire to preserve itself :
"hunger" is already an interpretation based upon
the observation of a more or less complex organ-
isin (hunger is a specialised and later form of
the instinct; it is an expression of the system of
divided labour, in the service of a higher instinct
which rules the whole).
.
.
* See Beyond Good and Evil, in this edition, Aph. 13.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
129
652.
be so.
It is just as impossible to regard hunger as the
primum mobile, as it is to take self-preservation to
Hunger, considered as the result of in-
sufficient nourishment, means hunger as the result
of a will to power which can no longer dominate.
It is not a question of replacing a loss,—it is only
later on, as the result of the division of labour,
when the Will to Power has discovered other and
quite different ways of gratifying itself, that the
appropriating lust of the organism is reduced to
hunger to the need of replacing what has been
lost.
653
We can but laugh at the false “Altruism" of
biologists : propagation among the amabæ ap-
pears as a process of jetsam, as an advantage to
them. It is an excretion of useless matter.
654
The division of a protoplasm into two takes
place when its power is no longer sufficient to
subjugate the matter it has appropriated: pro-
creation is the result of impotence.
In the cases in which the males seek the females
and become one with them, procreation is the re-
sult of hunger.
655.
The weaker vessel is driven to the stronger from
a need of nourishment; it desires to get under it,
I
VOL. II.


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130
THE WILL TO POWER.
if possible to become one with it.
The stronger,
on the contrary, defends itself from others; it refuses
to perish in this way; it prefers rather to split itself
into two or more parts in the process of growing.
One may conclude that the greater the urgency
seems to become one with something else, the
more weakness in some form is present. The
greater the tendency to variety, difference, inner
decay, the more strength is actually to hand.
The instinct to cleave to something, and the
instinct to repel something, are in the inorganic as
in the organic world, the uniting bond. The whole
distinction is a piece of hasty judgment.
The will to power in every combination of forces,
defending itself against the stronger and coming
down unmercifully upon the weaker, is more correct.
N. B. -All processes may be regarded as “ beings. "
)
656.
The will to power can manifest itself only
against obstacles; it therefore goes in search of
what resists it—this is the primitive tendency of
the protoplasm when it extends its pseudopodia
and feels about it. The act of appropriation and
assimilation is, above all, the result of a desire
to overpower, a process of forming, of additional
building and rebuilding, until at last the subjected
creature has become completely a part of the
superior creature's sphere of power, and has in-
creased the latter. -If this process of incorporation
does not succeed, then the whole organism falls to
pieces; and the separation occurs as the result of the
will to power : in order to prevent the escape of that
-


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
131
which has been subjected, the will to power falls into
two wills (under some circumstances without even
abandoning completely its relation to the two).
“Hunger" is only a more narrow adaptation,
once the fundamental instinct of power has won
power of a more abstract kind.
.
657.
What is "passive"? To be hindered in the
outward movement of
grasping: it is thus an
act of resistance and
reaction.
What is “active"? . To stretch out for power.
Nutrition"
Is only a derived pheno-
menon; the primitive
form of it was the will
to stuff everything in-
side one's own skin.
Procreation" :: Only derived; originally,
in those cases in which
one will was unable to
organise the collective
mass it had appropri-
ated, an opposing will
came into power, which
undertook to effect the
separation and estab-
lish a new centre of
organisation, after a
struggle with the ori-
ginal will.
9


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132
THE WILL TO POWER.
“ Pleasure”
Is a feeling of power
(presupposing the ex-
istence of pain).
658.
(1) The organic functions shown to be but forms
of the fundamental will, the will to power, and
buds thereof.
(2) The will to power specialises itself as will to
nutrition, to property, to tools, to servants (obedi-
ence), and to rulers: the body as an example. —
The stronger will directs the weaker. There is no
other form of causality than that of will to will.
It is not to be explained mechanically.
(3) Thinking, feeling, willing, in all living organ-
isms. What is a desire if it be not: a provoca-
tion of the feeling of power by an obstacle (or, better
still, by rhythmical obstacles and resisting forces)
-so that it surges through it? Thus in all plea-
sure pain is understood. -If the pleasure is to be
very great, the pains preceding it must have been
very long, and the whole bow of life must have
been strained to the utmost.
(4) Intellectual functions. The will to shaping,
forming, and making like, etc.
(6) Man.
659.
With the body as clue. -Granting that the" soul”
was only an attractive and mysterious thought,


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
133
-wer
ex-
ms
nd
to
i-
o
1.
from which philosophers rightly, but reluctantly,
separated themselves—that which they have since
learnt to put in its place is perhaps even more
attractive and even more mysterious. The human
body, in which the whole of the most distant and
most recent past of all organic life once more
becomes living and corporal, seems to flow through
this past and right over it like a huge and inaud-
ible torrent: the body is a more wonderful thought
than the old " soul. " In all ages the body, as our
actual property, as our most certain being, in short,
as our ego, has been more earnestly believed in
than the spirit (or the "soul,” or the subject, as
the school jargon now calls it). It has never
occurred to any one to regard his stomach as a
strange or a divine stomach; but that there is a
tendency and a predilection in man to regard all
his thoughts as "inspired,” all his values as “im-
parted to him by a God," all his instincts as
dawning activities—this is proved by the evidence
of every age in man's history. Even now, especi-
ally among artists, there may very often be noticed
a sort of wonder, and a deferential hesitation to
decide, when the question occurs to them, by what
means they achieved their happiest work, and
from which world the creative thought came down
to them: when they question in this way, they
are possessed by a feeling of guilelessness and
childish shyness. They dare not say: “That came
from me; it was my hand which threw that die. ”
Conversely, even those philosophers and theolo-
gians, who in their logic and piety found the most
imperative reasons for regarding their body as a
:
!


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134
THE WILL TO POWER.
deception (and even as a deception overcome and
disposed of), could not help recognising the foolish
fact that the body still remained : and the most
unexpected proofs of this are to be found partly in
Pauline and partly in Vedantic philosophy. But
what does strength of faith ultimately mean?
Nothing ! -A strong faith might also be a foolish
faith There is food for reflection.
And supposing the faith in the body were ulti-
mately but the result of a conclusion; supposing
it were a false conclusion, as idealists declare it is,
would it not then involve some doubt concerning
the trustworthiness of the spirit itself which thus
causes us to draw wrong conclusions ?
Supposing the plurality of things, and space,
and time, and motion (and whatever the other
first principles of a belief in the body may be)
were errors—what suspicions would not then be
roused against the spirit which led us to form such
first principles ? Let it suffice that the belief in
the body is, at any rate for the present, a much
stronger belief than the belief in the spirit, and he
who would fain undermine it assails the authority
of the spirit most thoroughly in so doing!
660.
The Body as an Empire.
The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the
rulers (the fight between the cells and the tissues).
Slavery and the division of labour : the higher
type alone possible through the subjection of the
lower to a function.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
135
Pleasure and pain, not contraries. The feeling
of power.
"Nutrition” only a result of the insatiable lust
of appropriation in the Will to Power.
“ Procreation ": this is the decay which super-
venes when the ruling cells are too weak to organ-
ise appropriated material.
It is the moulding force which will have a con-
tinual supply of new material (more" force ”). The
masterly construction of an organism out of an egg.
“The mechanical interpretation”: recognises
only quantities: but the real energy is in the
quality. Mechanics can therefore only describe
processes; it cannot explain them.
Purpose. ” We should start out from the
sagacity” of plants.
The concept of “meliorism”: not only greater
complexity, but greater power it need not be only
greater masses).
Conclusion concerning the evolution of man:
the road to perfection lies in the bringing forth of
the most powerful individuals, for whose use the
great masses would be converted into mere tools
(that is to say, into the most intelligent and flex-
ible tools possible).
66
661.
Why is all activity, even that of a sense, associ-
ated with pleasure? Because, before the activity
was possible, an obstacle or a burden was done
away with. Or, rather, because all action is a
process of overcoming, of becoming master of, and
of increasing the feeling of power ? — The pleasure


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136
THE WILL TO POWER.
of thought. —Ultimately it is not only the feeling
of power, but also the pleasure of creating and of
contemplating the creation : for all activity enters
our consciousness in the form of “works. ”
662.
Creating is an act of selecting and of finishing
the thing selected. (In every act of the will, this
is the essential element. )
663
All phenomena which are the result of intentions
may be reduced to the intention of increasing power,
664.
When we do anything, we are conscious of a
feeling of strength; we often have this sensation
before the act—that is to say, while imagining the
thing to do (as, for instance, at the sight of an
enemy, of an obstacle, which we feel equal to): it
is always an accompanying sensation. Instinc-
tively we think that this feeling of strength is the
cause of the action, that it is the “motive force. ”
Our belief in causation is the belief in force and
its effect; it is a transcript of our experience: in
which we identify force and the feeling of force.
-
Force, however, never moves things; the strength
which is conscious “ does not set the muscles mov-
ing. " "Of such a process we have no experience,
no idea. ” “We experience as little concerning
)


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
WILL
137
>
force as a motive power, as concerning the necessity
of a movement. ” Force is said to be the con-
straining element ! “ All we know is that one
thing follows another ;-we know nothing of
either compulsion or arbitrariness in regard to the
one following the other. ” Causality is first in-
vented by thinking compulsion into the sequence
of processes. A certain "understanding" of the
“”
thing is the result—that is to say, we humanise
the process a little, we make it more “ familiar”;
the familiar is the known habitual fact of human
compulsion associated with the feeling of force.
665.
I have the intention of extending my arm;
taking it for granted that I know as little of the
physiology of the human body and of the mechani-
cal laws of its movements as the man in the street,
what could there be more vague, more bloodless,
more uncertain than this intention compared with
what follows it? And supposing I were the
astutest of mechanics, and especially conversant
with the formulæ which are applicable in this case,
I should not be able to extend my arm one whit
the better. Our“ knowledge” and our "action”
"
in this case lie coldly apart: as though in two
different regions. --Again: Napoleon carries out
a plan of campaign—what does that mean? In
this case, everything concerning the consummation
of the campaign is known, because everything must
be done through words of command: but even
here subordinates are taken for granted, who apply
-


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138
THE WILL TO POWER.
and adapt the general plan to the particular emer-
gency, to the degree of strength, etc.
666.
.
For ages we have always ascribed the value of
an action, of a character, of an existence, to the
intention, to the purpose for which it was done,
acted, or lived: this primeval idiosyncrasy of taste
ultimately takes a dangerous turn-provided the
lack of intention and purpose in all phenomena
comes ever more to the front in consciousness.
With it a general depreciation of all values seems
to be preparing: “All is without sense. ”—This
melancholy phrase means: “All sense lies in the
intention, and if the intention is absolutely lacking,
then sense must be lacking too. " In conformity
with this valuation, people were forced to place the
value of life in a “ life after death,” or in the pro-
gressive development of ideas, or of mankind, or of
the people, or of man to superman; but in this
way the progressus in infinitum of purpose had
been reached : it was ultimately necessary to find
one's self a place in the process of the world
(perhaps with the disdæmonistic outlook, it was
a process which led to nonentity).
In regard to this point, “purpose" needs a some-
what more severe criticism : it ought to be recog-
nised that an action is never caused by a purpose;
that an object and the means thereto are inter-
pretations, by means of which certain points in a
phenomena are selected and accentuated, at the
cost of other, more numerous, points; that every


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
139
a
time something is done for a purpose, something
fundamentally different, and yet other things
happen; that in regard to the action done with a
purpose, the case is the same as with the so-called
purposefulness of the heat which is radiated from
the sun: the greater part of the total sum is squan-
dered; a portion of it, which is scarcely worth
reckoning, has a "purpose," has “sense"; that
an “ end" with its “means is an absurdly in-
definite description, which indeed may be able to
command as a precept, as “ will,” but presupposes
a system of obedient and trained instruments,
which, in the place of the indefinite, puts forward
a host of determined entities (i. e. we imagine a
system of clever but narrow intellects who postu-
late end and means, in order to be able to grant
our only known “end,” the role of the cause of
an action,”—a proceeding to which we have no
right: it is tantamount to solving a problem by
placing its solution in an inaccessible world which
we cannot observe).
Finally, why could not an "end" be merely an
accompanying feature in the series of changes
among the active forces which bring about the
action-a pale stenographic symbol stretched in
consciousness beforehand, and which serves as a
guide to what happens, even as a symbol of what
happens, not as its cause ? —But in this way we
criticise will itself: is it not an illusion to regard
that which enters consciousness as will-power. as
a cause ? Are not all conscious phenomena only
final phenomena—the lost links in a chain, but
apparently conditioning one another in their


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140
THE WILL TO POWER.
sequence within the plane of consciousness? This
might be an illusion.
6
667.
Science does not inquire what impels us to
will: on the contrary, it denies that willing takes
place at all, and supposes that something quite
different has happened-in short, that the belief in
« will ” and “end” is an illusion. It does not in-
quire into the motives of an action, as if these had
been present in consciousness previous to the
action : but it first divides the action up into a
group of phenomena, and then seeks the previous
history of this mechanical movement, but not in
the terms of feeling, perception, and thought; from
this quarter it can never accept the explanation:
perception is precisely the matter of science, which
has to be explained. The problem of science is
precisely to explain the world, without taking
perceptions as the cause: for that would mean
regarding perceptions themselves as the cause of
perceptions. The task of science is by no means
accomplished.
Thus: either there is no such thing as will,—
the hypothesis of science, or the will is free. The
latter assumption represents the prevailing feeling,
of which we cannot rid ourselves, even if the hypo-
thesis of science were proved.
The popular belief in cause and effect is founded
on the principle that free will is the cause of every
effect : thereby alone do we arrive at the feeling
of causation. And thereto belongs also the feeling
that every cause is not an effect, but always only


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
14L
a cause
-if will is the cause, “Our acts of will
are not necessary"—this lies in the very concept of
« will. " The effect necessarily comes after the
cause that is what we feel. It is merely a
hypothesis that even our willing is compulsory in
every case.
668.
“To will ” is not “to desire," to strive, to aspire
to; it distinguishes itself from that through the
passion of commanding.
There is no such thing as "willing," but only the
willing of something: the aion must not be severed
from the state—as the epistemologists sever it.
“Willing," as they understand it, is no more OS-
sible than " thinking": it is a pure invention.
It is essential to willing that something should
be commanded (but that does not mean that the
will is carried into effect).
The general state of tension, by virtue of which
a force seeks to discharge itself, is not “willing. ”.
>
669.
“Pain" and "pleasure” are the most absurd
means of expressing judgments, which of course
does not mean that the judgments which are
enunciated in this way must necessarily be absurd.
The elimination of all substantiation and logic, a
yes or no in the reduction to a passionate desire
to have or to reject, an imperative abbreviation,
the utility of which is irrefutable: that is pain
and pleasure. Its origin is in the central sphere


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142
THE WILL TO POWER.
(
of the intellect; its pre-requisite is an infinitely
accelerated process of perceiving, ordering, co-
ordinating, calculating, concluding: pleasure and
pain are always final phenomena, they are never
causes. ”
As to deciding what provokes pain and pleasure,
that is a question which depends upon the degree
of power: the same thing, when confronted with a
small quantity of power, may seem a danger and
may suggest the need of speedy defence, and when
confronted with the consciousness of greater power,
may be a voluptuous stimulus and may be followed
by a feeling of pleasure.
All feelings of pleasure and pain presuppose a
measuring of collective utility and collective harm-
fulness: consequently a sphere where there is the
willing of an object (of a condition) and the selec-
tion of the means thereto. Pleasure and pain are
never "original facts. ”
The feelings of pleasure and pain are reactions
of the will (emotions) in which the intellectual
centre fixes the value of certain supervening
changes as a collective value, and also as an in-
troduction of contrary actions.
670.
The belief in “ emotions. " Emotions are a
fabrication of the intellect, an invention of causes
which do not exist. All general bodily sensations
which we do not understand are interpreted intel-
lectually—that is to say, a reason is sought why we
feel thus or thus among certain people or in certain


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
143
experiences. Thus something disadvantageous
dangerous, and strange is taken for granted, as if
it were the cause of our being indisposed; as a
matter of fact, it gets added to the indisposition,
so as to make our condition thinkable. -- Mighty
rushes of blood to the brain, accompanied by a
feeling of suffocation, are interpreted as “anger”:
the people and things which provoke our anger
are a means of relieving our physiological con-
dition. Subsequently, after long habituation,
certain processes and general feelings are so
regularly correlated that the sight of certain pro-
cesses provokes that condition of general feeling,
and induces vascular engorgements, the ejection of
seminal fluid, etc. : we then say that the “emotion
is provoked by propinquity. "
Judgments already inhere in pleasure and pain:
stimuli become differentiated, according as to
whether they increase or reduce the feeling of
power.
The belief in willing. To believe that a thought
may be the cause of a mechanical movement is
to believe in miracles. The consistency of science
demands that once we have made the world think-
able for ourselves by means of pictures, we should
also make the emotions, the desires, the will, etc. ,
thinkable—that is to say, we should deny them
and treat them as errors of the intellect.
>
671.
Free will or no free will ? --There is no such
thing as “ Will”: that is only a simplified con-


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144
THE WILL TO POWER.
ception on the part of the understanding, like
" matter. "
All actions must first be prepared and made pos-
sible mechanically before they can be willed. Or,
in most cases the "object" of an action enters the
brain only after everything is prepared for its
accomplishment. The object is an inner "stimulus"
-nothing more.
672.
The most proximate prelude to an action
relates to that action : but further back still there
lies a preparatory history which covers a far
wider field: the individual action is only a factor
in a much more extensive and subsequent fact.
The shorter and the longer processes are not
reported.
673
The theory of chance : the soul is a selecting
and self-nourishing being, which is persistently
extremely clever and creative (this creative power
is commonly overlocked ! it is taken to be merely
passive).
I recognised the active and creative power with-
in the accidental. -Accident is in itself nothing
more than the clashing of creative impulses.
674.
Among the enormous multiplicity of pheno-
mena to be observed in an organic being, that
part which becomes conscious is a mere means :
and the particle of “virtue," "self-abnegation,"


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
145
"
and other fanciful inventions, are denied in a most
thoroughgoing manner by the whole of the re-
maining phenomena. We would do well to study
our organism in all its immorality.
The animal functions are, as a matter of fact, a
million times more important than all beautiful
states of the soul and heights of consciousness :
the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are
not needed as instruments in the service of the
animal functions. The whole of conscious life:
the spirit together with the soul, the heart, good-
ness, and virtue; in whose service does it work?
In the greatest possible perfection of the means
(for acquiring nourishment and advancement)
serving the fundamental animal functions: above
all, the ascent of the line of Life.
That which is called “flesh” and “body” is of
such incalculably greater importance, that the rest
is nothing more than a small appurtenance. To
continue the chain of life so that it becomes ever
more powerful—that is the task.
But now observe how the heart, the soul, virtue,
and spirit together conspire formally to thwart
this purpose: as if they were the object of every
endeavour! . . The degeneration of life is es-
sentially determined by the extraordinary falli-
bility of consciousness, which is held at bay least of
all by the instincts, and thus commits the gravest
and profoundest errors.
Now could any more insane extravagance of
vanity be imagined than to measure the value of
existence according to the pleasant or unpleasant
feelings of this consciousness? It is obviously only
K
VOL. 11.


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146
THE WILL TO POWER.
a means: and pleasant or unpleasant feelings are
also no more than means.
According to what standard is the objective
value measured ? According to the quantity of
increased and more organised power alone.
675.
6
")
»
»
The value of all valuing. --My desire would be
to see the agent once more identified with the
action, after action has been deprived of all mean-
ing by having been separated in thought from the
agent; I should like to see the notion of doing
something, the idea of a “purpose," of an "inten-
tion," of an object, reintroduced into the action,
after action has been made insignificant by having
been artificially separated from these things.
All “objects,” “purposes," “ meanings,” are only
manners of expression and metamorphoses of the
one will inherent in all phenomena: of the will to
power. To have an object, a purpose, or an in-
tention, in fact to will generally, is equivalent to
the desire for greater strength, for fuller growth,
and for the means thereto in addition.
The most general and fundamental instinct in
all action and willing is precisely on that account
the one which is least known and is most con-
cealed; for in practice we always follow its bid-
ding, for the simple reason that we are in ourselves
its bidding.
All valuations are only the results of, and the
narrow points of view in serving, this one will:
valuing in itself is nothing save this,-will to power.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
147
criticise existence from the standpoint of
. . y one of these values is utter nonsense and error.
Even supposing that a process of annihilation
follows from such a value, even so this process is
in the service of this will.
The valuation of existence itself! But existence
is this valuing itself ! —and even when we say
“no," we still do what we are.
We ought now to perceive the absurdity of this
pretence at judging existence; and we ought to
try and discover what actually takes place there.
It is symptomatic.
676.
Concerning the Origin of our Valuations.
We are able to analyse our body, and by doing
so we get the same idea of it as of the stellar
system, and the differences between organic and
inorganic lapses. Formerly the movements of the
stars were explained as the effects of beings con-
sciously pursuing a purpose: this is no longer
required, and even in regard to the movements of
the body and its changes, the belief has long since
been abandoned that they can be explained by
an appeal to a consciousness which has a deter-
mined purpose. By far the greater number of
movements have nothing to do with consciousness
at all: neither have they anything to do with sensa-
tion. Sensations and thoughts are extremely rare
and insignificant things compared with the in-
numerable phenomena occurring every second.
On the other hand, we believe that a certain


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148
THE WILL TO POWER.
conformity of means to ends rules over the
smallest phenomenon, which it is quite beyond u.
deepest science to understand : a sort of cautious-
ness, selectiveness, co-ordination, and repairing
process, etc.
In short, we are in the presence of
an activity to which it would be necessary to ascribe
an incalculably higher and more extensive intellect
than the one we are acquainted with. We learn to
think less of all that is conscious: we unlearn the
habit of making ourselves responsible for ourselves,
because, as conscious beings fixing purposes, we
are but the smallest part of ourselves.
Of the numerous influences taking effect every
second, for instance, air, electricity, we feel
scarcely anything at all. There might be a
number of forces, which, though they never make
themselves felt by us, yet influence us continually.
Pleasure and pain are very rare and scanty phen-
omena, compared with the countless stimuli with
which a cell or an organ operates upon another
cell or organ.
It is the phase of the modesty of consciousness.
Finally, we can grasp the conscious ego itself,
merely as an instrument in the service of that
higher and more extensive intellect: and then we
may ask whether all conscious willing, all con-
scious purposes, all valuations, are not perhaps only
means by virtue of which something essentially
different is attained, from that which consciousness
supposes. We mean: it is a question of our
pleasure and pain—but pleasure and pain might
be the means whereby we had something to do
which lies outside our consciousness.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
149
This is to show how very superficial all conscious
phenomena really are; how an action and the image
of it differ; how little we know about what precedes
an action; how fantastic our feelings, “ free will," and
"cause and effect" are ; how thoughts and images,
just like words, are only signs of thoughts; the
impossibility of finding the grounds of any action;
the superficiality of all praise and blame; how
essentially our conscious life is composed of fancies
and illusion; how all our words merely stand for
fancies (our emotions too), and how the union of
mankind depends upon the transmission and con-
tinuation of these fancies : whereas, at bottom, the
real union of mankind by means of procreation
pursues its unknown way. Does this belief in the
common fancies of men really alter mankind ? Or
is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an
expression in itself of unknown changes ? Are
there really such things as will, purposes, thoughts,
values ? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no
more than mirage ? Even when values seem to
determine the actions of a man, they are, as a
matter of fact, doing something quite different!
In short, granting that a certain conformity of
means to end might be demonstrated in the action
of nature, without the assumption of a ruling ego:
could not our notion of purposes, and our will, etc. ,
be only a symbolic language standing for something
quite different-that is to say, something not-
willing and unconscious ? only the thinnest sem-
blance of that natural conformity of means to end
in the organic world, but not in any way different
therefrom?


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150
THE WILL TO POWER.
Briefly, perhaps the whole of mental develop-
ment is a matter of the body: it is the consciously
recorded history of the fact that a higher body is
forming. The organic ascends to higher regions.
Our longing to know Nature is a means by
virtue of which the body would reach perfection.
Or, better still, hundreds of thousands of experi-
ments are made to alter the nourishment and the
mode of living of the body: the body's conscious-
ness and valuations, its kinds of pleasure and pain,
are signs of these changes and experiments. In the
end, it is not a question concerning man; for he must
be surpassed.
677
To what Extent are all Interpretations of the
World Symptoms of a Ruling Instinct.
The artistic contemplation of the world: to sit
before the world and to survey it. But here the
analysis of æsthetical contemplation, its reduction
to cruelty, its feeling of security, its judicial and
detached attitude, etc. , are lacking. The artist
himself must be taken, together with his. psycho-
logy (the criticism of the instinct of play, as a
discharge of energy, the love of change, the love
of bringing one's soul in touch with strange things,
the absolute egoism of the artist, etc. ). What in-
stincts does he sublimate ?
The scientific contemplation of the world : a
criticism of the psychological longing for science,
the desire to make everything comprehensible; the
desire to make everything practical, useful, capable
of being exploited-to what extent this is anti-
a


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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
151
æsthetic. Only that value counts, which may be
reckoned in figures. How it happens that a
mediocre type of man preponderates under the
influence of science. It would be terrible if even
history were to be taken possession of in this way
-the realm of the superior, of the judicial. What
instincts are here sublimated !
The religious contemplation of the world: a
criticism of the religious man. It is not necessary
to take the moral man as the type, but the man
who has extreme feelings of exaltation and of deep
depression, and who interprets the former with
thankfulnsss or suspicion - without, however,
seeking their origin in himself (nor the latter
either). The man who essentially feels anything
but free, who sublimates his conditions and states
of submission.
The moral contemplation of the world. The
feelings peculiar to certain social ranks are pro-
jected into the universe : stability, law, the making
of things orderly, and the making of things alike,
are sought in the highest spheres, because they are
valued most highly-above everything or behind
everything
What is common to all: the ruling instincts
wish to be regarded as the highest values in general,
even as the creative and ruling powers. It is
understood that these instincts either oppose or
overcome each other (join up synthetically, or
alternate in power). Their profound antagonism
is, however, so great, that in those cases in which
they all insist upon being gratified, a man of very
thorough mediocrity is the outcome.


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THE WILL TO POWER.
678.
It is a question whether the origin of our
apparent "knowledge" is not also a mere offshoot
of our older valuations, which are so completely
assimilated that they belong to the very basis of
our nature. In this way only the more recent
needs engage in battle with results of the oldest
needs.
The world is seen, felt, and interpreted thus and
thus, in order that organic life may be preserved
with this particular manner of interpretation.
Man is not only an individual, but the continuation
of collective organic life in one definite line. The
fact that man survives, proves that a certain species
of interpretations (even though it still be added to)
has also survived ; that, as a system, this method
of interpreting has not changed.